Godfather
by Claire D'Aubigne
Summary: They called Alba the Don. Don't ever let it be said that Alba doesn't have a sense of humor.


Disclaimer: not my pond. Double disclaimer: not affiliated with the mafia. _Maximum Impact_ canon, encompassing both games, pre-MI manga, and between-game anime. Spoilers for pregame storyline and manga. No warnings. For fanfic100 on LJ.

* * *

At the age of fourteen, Alba was adopted.

At fifteen, he was unofficially initiated into Southtown's underworld.

At nineteen, his mentor was murdered and the peace that Fate—no, that they had _all_ worked hard to build had crumbled. With nobody officially ruling this city, and everybody fighting for the power to do so, Southtown was a dangerous place to live again.

At twenty-one, he fought against Duke, and won. Privately, he thought it was a fluke. But it pitched the balance of power back into his favor, and he found that Southtown was in his hands. Again.

He didn't remember the first time Soiree came in laughing, or who he'd said had called Alba the Don. "Does this mean I get to be your underboss, Bro?" Soiree had asked, laughing. Their friends had been around to hear it, and he lost count of how many times he told them to stop calling him the Don before he stopped trying. Hell, he wasn't even _Italian. _Not that logic and facts stopped them.

Gallagher had asked him once if he was going to have a cool name. "That one guy got to be the Teflon Don," he said, to the amusement and delight of everybody else in the room.

Alba had shot him down with just a look. It didn't stop any of them from harassing him, but at least it hadn't spread to everybody _ielse/i_ in the town picking up the habit—at least not to his face.

He'd never tell his brother or their friends—he'd never hear the end of it if he did—but he could see the similarities. He was educated, he'd read the books. More importantly, he'd made his choices by himself, and he had to live with them. Even if it meant keeping most of his less-than-stellar past to himself, only using it to guilt himself into making the right decisions if it came down to that.

For the years between Fate's murder and his own defeat of Duke, Alba had disappeared, abandoning Soiree and the rest of the guys in favor of revenge. His plan then had been to murder Duke in his sleep, or even attempt the whole cement shoes trick (how very mafioso of him) like Duke had bragged that he'd done with Fate. It was a lie—his adoptive father was shot in the back of the head, not drowned—but the arrogance just made Alba itch to try it. He'd even gone so far as to actually _join_ Duke's gang, as an assassin, and had worked his way slowly up the chain of importance.

It might have actually worked, if he hadn't run into Soiree (and saying that his brother was shocked to see him was an understatement), which had set off a chain of events that ultimately led to Duke finding out who he was. He'd learned enough to be considered a liability to Mephistopheles and had been in the process of trying to save his own ass when Soiree and their friends had shown up.

Loyal to the last, that was his twin. Somehow, between when they'd met the last time and now, Soiree had figured out what was going on, so Alba wasn't going to sleep with the fishes that day. "Knew you'd never betray Fate like that, Bro," Soiree said, and all had been forgiven as far as he was concerned.

He might've been able to keep his brother ignorant of his existence for that long, but the rest of the town—the people who'd stayed, anyway—knew who and what he was. They were still terrified of him, which was probably why he hated to be called the Don so much. It implied that he ruled this city for personal gain, not for the benefit of the people who lived here, and the ones that were slowly moving back.

It took a while, but people slowly started trusting him again. It didn't solve the problems—Southtown was still a war zone, with too many gangs involved in turf wars, too many corrupt cops, not enough good people. But the good people would come back, if he worked hard enough. And he would.

He even worked to save the kittens. _That_ had been the last time that any of his friends had teased him about being the Don of anything. ("You can be the Kitten Don!" Gallagher yelled, thrusting a fist into the air. Alba had knocked him on his ass half a second later.)

Either to prove a point or to remind himself of his own shameful decisions (or maybe a little of both), Alba named the kittens Capone and Corleone. His friends had marveled. Alba just laughed it off.

Never let it be said that Alba Meira lacked a sense of humor.


End file.
